Challenges and Opportunities

New Horizons in Management series

The workforce is aging as people live longer and healthier lives, and mandatory retirement has become a relic of the past. Though workforces have always contained both younger and older employees the age range today has expanded, and the generational gap has become more distinct. This book advocates the need for talented employees of all ages as a way to prevent potential skill shortages and considers both the challenges and opportunities that these changes raise for individual organizations. The benefits they discuss include greater employee diversity with regards to knowledge, skills experience and perspectives, whilst challenges involve potential generational tensions, stereotypes and age biases. The book further places an emphasis on initiatives to create generation-friendly workplaces; these involve fostering lifelong learning, tackling age stereotypes and biases, employing reverse mentoring where younger employees mentor older employees, and offering older individuals career options including phased retirement, bridge employment and encore careers.

Monograph Chapter

Extract

Since the advent of the financial crisis in 2007/08, there has been a steady decline in the economy of many countries. Between 2008 and 2009, credit became more expensive and businesses lost their ability to pay their employees. As a result, output fell, which led to layoffs, and less hiring across the globe. In addition, funding by governments was diminishing over time, thus leading them to cut needed social programs including health care, pensions, old age security, housing and jobs (Evans, 2010; Froman, 2010; Stuckler and Basu, 2013). In countries worldwide, the financial crisis and the recession that followed resulted in severe increases in unemployment, which varied in degree among countries. In May 2009, 42,000 jobs were lost in Canada, and its unemployment rate of 8.4 percent was the highest it had been in 11 years (Usalcus, 2010). In the US as well, there was an increase in unemployment by 2009, and 15.3 million people were jobless (US Department of Labor, 2010). The US unemployment rate was 10.2 percent in October 2009, reaching double digits for the first time in 26 years (Goodman, 2009). The situation was particularly dire in parts of the European Union, including Ireland, Greece and Spain. In Ireland and the United Kingdom, 6.2 million new applications for unemployment insurance were received in 2009 (Telegraph, 2010).

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